Taking care of ourselves, one another, and our communities
Severe weather events can feel really scary. EC STEM Lab's home base is in East Tennessee which experienced catastrophic damage from Hurricane Helene in 2024. We have found comfort in the amount of resources available to help with emotional processing of severe weather events and resources that help adults and children understand the science of severe weather.
It has been helpful for us to understand the science behind what happened in our situation and encourage others to explore this with young children. As we have found understanding the science of what happened during the Hurricane helpful in our emotional processing, we also wanted to think of how young children process their emotions. In order to create a sequence that brings science education and resilience-informed care together, we collaborated with two resilience-informed care researchers to create an exploration sequence that could be adapted to many different severe weather events. We hope the sequence serves as inspiration to allow for the children you are working with to process the event that happened to them.
Additionally, we have compiled resources on this page to use for any severe weather event! There are resources for preparation, emotional processing, understanding the science of severe storms, and navigating relief efforts.
A lot of children might be scientifically curious and interested in the Science Behind it! Checkout those links to understand how and why hurricanes occur. Information:
It is important to encourage students to support the community at these hard times. They can share their toys with other kids who might have lost theirs or write a nice note to someone who feels sad. Every little bit of kindness helps, and when we all work together, things start to get better.
